


Smugglers

by Aysu



Series: EBF Collection [2]
Category: Epic Battle Fantasy (Matt Roszak Video Games)
Genre: Anna is Unhappy, Lance is a semi-reformed villain, Lance is much more morally black when not around the others, Lance worries, Language, OC is not all that important, Threats, Violence, because healing magic is a Thing, but will deny it to his dying breath, questionable morals, tags are still hard, temporary injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aysu/pseuds/Aysu
Summary: Anna gets into trouble acting as an official ranger from Greenwood, so Lance goes to save her.
Series: EBF Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015827
Kudos: 7





	Smugglers

Anna pushed off the pillar with a glance up at the sun's dwindling height when Matt and Natalie finally turned from the stall. "I'll meet you three at the inn. I told Lana I would check on some things while we were here," she announced to the others. 

Lance flicked his eyes up from the paper he'd been reading. "Greenwood needs supplies?" 

"No, the local guard requested an official ranger to investigate a couple of the warehouses for signs of smuggling, but most of the villagers are needed for the summer harvest, so I’m pretty much the only one free right now," Anna replied with a shrug. 

"Want us to come with?" Matt offered as he idly flicked the ends of his jacket to dislodged some dried sand. 

Anna shook her head and shouldered her bow into a more comfortable position before saying, "Nah, it shouldn’t take long. The warehouses are right next to each other on the dock, and I only need to make a quick check for the usual suspicious scuffs, abandoned drugs, obviously-foreign golden icons, hidden panels, etcetera. I’ll be done before you’re finished with dinner, so order me some food and I'll scarf it down once I get back. Lots of potatoes, and a helping of whatever's the seasonal veggie?" 

"With a good chunk of the day's roast," Natalie promised with a grin. She turned and called back over her shoulder, "See you at the usual inn, Anna!" 

The ranger waved and turned to slip into the crowd, quickly lost among the sea of market goers. The other three weaved their own way to the edge of the open air market, and down the familiar alleys and streets to their usual lodgings in Goldenbrick. Two hours later saw the trio scraping the last of their dinners from their plates, while a waiting platter of heaped food sat growing cold. Matt leaned back with a short belch before contemplatively eyeing Anna's share. 

"She should’ve been back by now," Natalie murmured through a yawn as she stacked her cup and utensils on her plate. 

Lance shrugged before throwing back his head to drain the last of his ale and shoving the flagon away. "Knowing Anna's justice streak, she's probably sifting through every sack of grain for contraband." He nudged the ranger’s plate towards Matt with a snort. "Quit giving the food bedroom eyes, and eat it. Anna can get leftovers from the kitchen when she finally shows up." 

Matt needed no second offer, and happily stuffed three forkfuls worth of mashed potatoes into his mouth at once. Natalie watched with a faint frown of resigned disapproval before pushing back to return the empty plates to the washbasin. She came back in time to see Matt shove the entire side of ham into his cheek, and blew a long sigh through her nose before shaking her head. 

"I’m turning in. Don’t forget to put the dishes away once you’re done being an affront to manners, Matt," she murmured as she padded for the stairs. 

Matt mumbled an affirmative before swallowing the entire mouthful at once under Lance's look of disturbed awe. He drained Anna's ale just as quickly before trotting to toss the tin dishes into the tub just before a scullery maid whisked it away, and called a cheerful compliment to the chef currently cursing over a meat grinder. Lance remained sitting when he passed by the table again, and Matt arched a questioning brow with a gesture at the stairs. 

"I’ll wait until Anna gets in before coming up. Last thing we need is to get kicked out of another inn because she once again decided picking the lock and slipping in is an acceptable strategy after lights out," the gunner explained with a shake of his head. 

Matt snorted and turned for the stairs, calling teasingly back, "You could just admit you don’t sleep well if we don’t all check in, dude." 

"Hardly," Lance scoffed. He raised his voice when Matt thumped up the stairs, "Don’t forget to knock before entering this time, idiot!" 

" That was  one time! " 

The gunner smirked at Matt’s muffled protest before leaning back in his chair and kicking his feet up on the table to wait. 

Another hour and a half went by, and soon the only people in the dining area were himself, one particularly pathetic drunkard in the far corner by the window, and the maids starting to put stools and chairs up to clean the floor for the night. Lance drummed his fingers on the table, scowling between the dark windows and the dwindling embers of the hearth. Finally, once even the drunkard had staggered off, and water was being sloshed to wash the suds from the kitchen out the door, he heaved himself to his feet and set his own chair up. 

"I’ve got to head out and check on an absent friend," he told the maid in a low tone. "Do you think you can leave the yard door unlocked? I'll lock it behind us once we get back." 

The young woman hesitated, fingers clenched around the handle of her bucket. "We're not supposed to leave the doors unlocked after curfew and once the taproom clears," she mumbled apologetically. 

Lance dug a handful of gold from his pocket with a crooked smirk, "Think you could just, ah, forget the lock for the night?" 

The woman pursed her lips and glanced around before nodding once, and swiftly snatched the gold to tuck in the pocket of her apron. "Fine, but you have to lock it as soon as you get back in, okay?" 

"On my honor," Lance promised with a solemn hand over his chest. He rolled his eyes as soon as she turned away, but waited until he'd silently slipped into the dark yard before muttering, "Exhibit A for why robots are superior drones: they don't take bribes unless programmed to. Stupid girl, if she has any sense, she'll take the gold and lock the door anyway. And speaking of stupid girls, Anna's gonna catch it from me when I find her." 

The gunner muttered more unfavorable things under his breath as he jammed his hands into his pockets and stalked towards the docks. A full moon provided ample light, bleaching the sandy cobblestone streets white, and turning the ocean silver in the distance. A few lamps lit major intersections, and several bars were still open for late-night drinkers to waste away in, doors wide open to allow warm light, drunken chatter, and the faint smoky incense of fires, tobacco, and drugs to spill out into the streets. 

Lance ignored every open door, and dodged around every shambling drunk, gaze fixed sourly on the dark lines of the piers and the bulky shadows of the warehouses lining the docks. Soon he was stomping down worn steps, leaving behind the nightlife of Goldenbrick in favor of the rushing hiss and splash of waves against breakers and rocks, and the faint creaking of the fishing boats rocking on their lines. 

With a deep breath of salty night air tainted by the lingering stench of fish, he stopped at the foot of the stairs and studied the dark warehouses. Anna hadn’t specified which ones had needed investigating, and there were no glows from under any of the doors. Somewhat reassuringly, there also were no broken barrels, damaged planks, lodged arrows, or any other signs of a fight—at least outside. 

Lance's scowl deepened and he silently unhooked his gunblade from his belt before stealing as quietly as he could up to the first warehouse. Despite his care, the dock creaked overloud under his feet in the general quiet of the night, and he irritably wondered why he even bothered to attempt sneaking, and whether it was worth it for moving to subsequent warehouses. Banishing the thought from his mind, he pressed his ear to the first door with held breath and closed eyes. 

Nothing but silence from within, and he couldn’t sense Anna. Lance moved on to the next one, which proved equally empty. It wasn’t until the fifth one, and right after he wondered what was stopping any random thief from simply breaking into these warehouses and looting whatever was within, that somebody tried getting the jump on him. 

Lance arched an unimpressed brow as he silently watched a gangly form clumsily duck out of sight behind a stack of barrels. A split second later, and he snorted when he heard a loud yelp followed followed by a clattering crash. A bucket rolled out from behind the barrels, and Lance made a cursory check of the area around him on the off chance that this person was simply a very bad diversion for an ambush. Nothing unusual stood out, and he approached the barrels with his weapon loosely ready. A teenaged boy was attempting to free his legs from a fishing net without dropping the crude club he had gripped in his right hand. 

"What barnacle breath left these nets here?" he hissed under his breath, oblivious of the unimpressed man standing over him. 

Lance cleared his throat and angled his gunblade to catch the moonlight. The boy froze and jerked to look up, eyes catching on the razor edge. He swallowed audibly before dragging his gaze further up to meet a cold, crimson glare. 

"Mind telling me what you’re doing here?" Lance asked quietly. He let his eyes wander to the boy's club and curled his lip, "Beside making the single worst attempt at an ambush I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen some real crappy ones." 

"I- I could ask you the s-same thing!" the boy blustered. 

He made a final, valiant effort to drag his legs free without success. Lance supposed there was some minor credit due for the sheer stupid gutsiness the kid had for him to still raise his club despite being literally stuck in a mess of his own making, and visibly shaking. 

Clearly not a fighter or a threat, Lance decided. 

Lance sheathed his weapon and flicked his hand to summon a small fire in his palm for light before he knelt down to fix the boy with a glare while simultaneously plucking the club from his weak grasp. He saw the boy's throat move in a swallow, and allowed a thin, humorless smile. "I’m asking the questions here, not you. Now why were you... 'attacking' me?" 

The boy stubbornly clenched his jaw before the fire over Lance’s palm flickered just a bit higher. "I knew you was one of the smugglers coming back to finish the job!" he squeaked, voice cracking in his panic. 

"Do I look like I'm some pathetic smuggler?" Lance asked blandly. He waited until the boy's eyes flicked down to the bits of metal reinforcing his armor, and over the protective badges pinned to his chest, and finally to the gunblade at his hip. "Didn’t think so. Next time you try jumping somebody, size them up properly first. Now, before I untangle you and hand back your little stick, I want to know if you saw a young woman come through here. She's a little over five feet tall, green hair, green eyes, wearing brown; she probably came through around sunset to check out the warehouses." 

The boy stilled and his eyes flashed stubbornly. "She ain’t no threat, so leave her alone! She didn’t do nothing to you!" He frowned when that earned a bark of laughter from Lance. 

"She’s more a threat than you'll ever be, kid," Lance snorted with a shake of his head and a smirk. "But that’s not why I’m looking for her. She was supposed to meet me and our friends at the inn, but she never showed. I know she was here looking into a smuggling operation. Based on the fact that she's still missing, I assume she fucked up and got herself into a mess." Lance's voice dropped threateningly and his eyes narrowed as he leaned closer, "And if you don’t want me to turn  you into a mess, you'll tell me what you know. Right.  Now ." 

Tears welled in the boy’s eyes from a mixture of fear and something else as he shrank back. "Y-You're her fr-friend?" he asked shakily. 

Lance rolled his eyes with an aggravated sigh. "Did I not just say that?" Surprisingly, that got the boy's shoulders to drop from their nervous hunch, and Lance leaned back to eye him appraisingly. "You've spoken to her." It wasn’t a question. 

Still, the boy shook his head and took a shuddering breath. "She ain't told me nothing. I seen her earlier, poking through the crates from evening delivery with the boss." 

Lance bit the inside of his cheek at the boy’s atrocious grammar, and nodded encouragingly. "Did she find anything suspicious?" 

"Um, not that I seen. I was a bit distracted, see, with, uh, with... work. Anyway, she and the boss went to the next warehouse, and next thing I know, there's a loud crash, and somebody's yelling, shouting to pull tighter." 

Lance's features pulled back into a scowl. "Was the harbor master in on the smuggling?" He watched the boy shuffle nervously, picking at the net still tangled around his legs. "I don’t care if you were getting some kind of kickback or benefit from whatever crimes are going on here, but I need to know how big this might have been. Anna could be in a lot of trouble." 

Finally, the boy nodded. "The boss is in on it. He does the paper side of things, see, so the books look like they match up to the shipment." He bit his lip before adding quietly, "I saw them, sir, I saw them throw her in the water." 

"They  what? " Lance's blood ran cold and he grabbed the boy by the shoulders. " Where? When? " 

"Oh, she ain’t dead, no worries!" the boy promised in a hasty squeak. "I pulled her out as soon as they went back inside!" His voice fell as he added, "She were nice to me, gave me a bit of gold when I asked. I couldn’t let her drown." 

Lance's grip slackened and he tilted his head back with a sigh of relief. After a moment, he lowered his head and reached for the net. "Alright, let’s get you loose so you can take me to her." His hands untwisted the tangled netting with deft ease and soon the boy was delicately rubbing the chafed skin. "What’s your name, kid?" 

"Robert, sir! Robby to me friends!" 

" Lance , please, not sir," the gunner grunted as he stood and offered his hand to pull the boy to his feet. "Now come on, the sooner I’ve got Anna, the sooner I can go get some sleep." 

Robert bobbed his head before giving the tangled nets a wide berth, and led the way between two of the warehouses and off the dock to the sandy shore. Soon he was showing the gunner into a ramshackle boat shelter and lighting an oil lamp. 

Lance sucked in a sharp breath when his eyes fell on Anna. Her hair was matted and clumped from salty water and dried blood, tangled about her pale face. A dark bruise had swelled up on her jaw, and her nose was misshapen with blood crusted around it. A swollen, bloody line around her neck spoke clearly of being strangled. One of her wrists was clearly broken, and swollen to twice its usual size. Her eyes were hidden behind fluttering lids, and Lance uneasily wondered if she had been unconscious the whole time. Her weapon was gone, as was her adventure pouch, and her clothing, when he felt it, was still damp. 

"Alright," Lance murmured after a swallow. "Robert, I need you to go get my friends. They’re staying in the third room on the left of the second floor landing at the Northern Star Inn—use the side door, it should be unlocked. Tell them Lance sent you, and lead them back here. I’ll watch over Anna, in case the smugglers do come looking for her. Can you do that?" 

Robert blinked at the back of Lance's head in awe. "You’re rich enough to stay at the Northern Star?" 

Lance turned a sour look on the kid. "Is that really important right now?" His eyes darkened at the way the boy hesitated. "I want you to think very carefully about what I will do to you if you try selling us out." He watched Robert swallow before adding more calmly, "On the other hand, if you go get my friends and bring them back here without any detours, stops, or snitching, I'll give you more money than you’ve ever seen in your life." 

Robert nodded hastily before bolting out the door. Lance listened to his slipping footsteps until they were gone before turning back to Anna. 

"Next time, you'll take one of us with you, twit," he muttered at her as he dug out a thick blanket from his adventure pouch to replace the makeshift blanket made from old sackcloth Robert had covered her with. 

Anna let out an unconscious sigh at the warmth, but didn’t stir as he began carefully dabbing at the cuts on her head with a cloth wetted with water from his canteen. Luckily, though the wounds were on top of massive lumps, the actual cuts themselves were fairly shallow, and a quick check of Anna's pupils showed nothing wrong with her reflexive responses. Lance still scowled as he delicately patted at the marks on her neck, clearing away the blood from what looked like rope burns, and hopefully soothing at least a little of what must hurt. He was just folding the cloth as a makeshift compress for her jaw when Anna's eyes fluttered before opening to stare dazedly upwards. 

Lance froze for a moment before leaning forwards. "...Anna? Can you hear me?" 

Anna's eyes rolled to look at him before she gritted her teeth and turned her head slightly. "Muh hea' hurths," she slurred, her voice a hoarse rasp through her damaged throat, and words distorted by her broken nose and what was likely a fairly serious concussion. 

Still, Lance gave her a strained smile. "I’ll bet. You look like you got into a fist fight with a bear, and the bear won." 

Anna huffed what might have been a laugh. "Wuh hap'en'?" She winced when he pressed the cloth to the bruise on her jaw. 

"Near as I’ve been able to find out, you got jumped by the smugglers you were supposed to be investigating," Lance replied, chasing after her pathetic flinch away from the pressure. "They threw your unconscious body into the ocean to drown, but luckily the homeless beggar you let con you fished you out and dragged you here. He's off fetching Matt and Natz, so you'll be up and giving the smugglers hell in no time." 

"Didn' con me," Anna huffed. She worked her swollen jaw a bit before adding, "No' 'is faul' pe'ple thuck." 

"Not his fault people suck?" Lance repeated before snorting. "No, I suppose it's not. Still, he's hardly a shining example of humanity himself, but hopefully good enough to not stab us in the back before you’re on your feet." 

Anna let out a long sigh and shut her eyes for a moment before her unbroken hand groped aimlessly under the blanket with increasing desperation. 

Lance guessed what she was searching for and shook his head, "They either broke or took your bow. Your adventure pouch is missing, too. I’ve still got that prototype steel bow in my pouch, so you can use that until we find your stolen stuff. I know you don’t like how quickly the arrows drop with that one, but it's better than being unarmed." 

Anna nodded slightly and swallowed painfully before whispering, "Thankth." 

"You’re welcome. Now stop talking, you’re making  my throat hurt." 

He smirked at the attempt Anna made to give him a disgruntled frown before he sat back on his heels with his arms crossed and his attention clearly fixed more outside the hut than within. Anna eyed him for a moment, trying to get her vision to quit swimming before gritting her teeth and steeling herself for an increased headache. She barely got her good arm braced before Lance was pressing a hand against her shoulder to keep her lying down. 

"Knock it off and stay down. Natz'll be here soon enough," Lance ordered gruffly. Anna gave a pathetic struggle for a few seconds, and he rolled his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. "Anna, what could you even do to help right now? Your arm's broken and you have a concussion. Seriously, just relax for a bit." 

Anna grumbled something unintelligible, but obediently relaxed back again, and Lance let go of her shoulder in favor of shuffling to the entrance to peer out into the night. Satisfied that nothing was stirring, he settled back down and cast another look across Anna. He was pleased to note her gaze seemed a little less unfocused, and that she wasn’t making any attempts to sit up again. His eyes flicked up again at the muffled sound of footsteps in sand, and he cautiously rested a hand against the hilt of his gunblade. 

"Lance? It’s us," Matt called quietly, correctly assuming the gunner to be on guard. 

Lance boosted himself to his feet, and pushed the curtain aside to see Matt and Natalie dressed and alert with Robert hovering not far away. "She's conscious, but she needs healing," Lance reported, moving aside to let Natalie through. He waited until the telltale glow of healing magic filtered out from under the cloth before turning his attention to Robert. "Good work, kid. Here's your pay." 

Matt's brows rose at the sizable pouch of gold Lance handed over. He estimated several thousand had to be contained within—more than ten times as much as they would typically pay out to a courier. "Bit much, don’t you think?" 

Lance snorted when Robert quickly backed off, clutching his gold with wide eyes away from Matt. "Hardly. This kid literally saved Anna's life when he dragged her out of the water, and he was keeping an eye out for her when I arrived." 

Matt's gaze darkened. "They tried to drown her?" 

"It's a fairly straightforward way to dispose of a corpse by the sea," Lance replied dismissively. "Who knows when she might have washed up again, if she washed up at all, and never mind what state the corpse might have been in." 

"There're sharks this time of year," Robert added in a hushed tone. 

"Not what I meant, but good to know, I guess," Lance snorted. He and a Matt turned when Natalie emerged followed closely by Anna, whose features were hard with anger. "And she's up and ready for murder. How do you want to tackle this?" 

Anna stormed past him, headed back for the dock proper. "I’m going to gut him and throw  him in the water, see how he likes it." 

"Violent," Lance noted approvingly. 

"But probably not legal," Natalie warned catching Anna by the wrist to halt her. "He isn’t aware of your survival, so it'll be easy enough to catch him in his bed." 

"Besides, there's more than one of them involved," Lance mused. His eyes drifted to Robert who was slowly inching his way into the boat shack he slept in. "Hey kid, where do the dockhands sleep, and does the harbormaster stay nearby?"


End file.
